Since the early days of computing and television, electronic visual displays have been commonly used to provide data output from computing or communications devices in a form that is easily discernable to users. Such displays are often referred to as monitors. Contemporary monitors are typically flat liquid crystal display (LCD) panels configured to receive a signal from a computing device for display as video, although many display technologies have been used and these technologies continue to evolve.
Monitors receive data for display from an output interface of the communications or communications source device. The display data may be formatted according to a particular video standard. Many video standards have been and continue to be in use, including composite video, video graphics array (“VGA”), Digital Video Interface (“DVI”), Serial Digital Interface (“SDI”), High-Definition Multimedia Interface “HDMI”, And DisplayPort™ (as promulgated by the Video Electronics Standard Association, “VESA”).
Monitors are usually limited in size due to cost or manufacturing limitations. Accordingly, in some applications it is desirable to display output from a particular computing device using more than one monitor in order to visualize the output. According to earlier video standards, routing a signal from a single output connector to a plurality of monitors using a splitter or other hub device would result in display of the same output on each monitor. In order for a source device to display different output to each connected monitor using such standards, it is typically necessary for the source device to generate separate video output streams and to provide a separate output connector on the source device to deliver a separate stream to each monitor for display. This may require additional connectors and hardware to be added to a motherboard or video processing card for example, which may occupy additional panel and enclosure space and may be undesirable, especially in small form devices such as laptop computers and smartphones.
The DisplayPort™ standard (“DP”) in contrast relies on packetized data transmission from the source to the monitor. As used herein, DisplayPort and DP refer to the DisplayPort v1.2 standard issued by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA), which is incorporated by reference in its entirety as if fully set forth herein, and other protocol standards and versions forward or backward compatible therewith. Packetized data transmission allows DP to support a multi-stream transport (MST) mode, where multiple monitors may each receive a separate display stream from a DP source via a single DP output connector. Using MST, data packets output from the source are each addressed to a particular downstream monitor, which receives and displays the data contained in data packets addressed to that monitor. A DP source device using MST can thus output video or other data which is addressed to each of a plurality of monitors using a single output connector.